Buying new PC for Video Editing any pointers?

[faramith]

Im going to buy a new PC for Video Editing, I would like to know whats the best hardware for this (Non MAC). The programs I currently use: Video Studio 10, DVDLab PRO, Nero, VirtualDub and DVDDecrypter. Im looking for faster and stable encoding.

thanks

[BJ_M]

best would be a dual xeon dual core with 16GB of memory

[redwudz]

And lots of hard drive space. At least two drives, more would be better.

How much are you intending to spend?

What video formats will you be working with?

How will you transfer the video to the computer? (Capture card, FireWire, etc.)

What format is your final product? DVD?

[faramith]

up to $2,000 and it would be for DIVX to MPEG2 encoding with DVD quality.

[redwudz]

For encoding, go for the fastest CPU you can afford, along with the aforementioned two or more hard drives. 1GB RAM would probably be enough. If you plan to use PhotoShop or other similar graphics programs, you might want 2GBs.

Good luck getting DVD quality from the average Xvid. Unless it's a high definition Xvid, you should get the same quality in the MPEG-2 as the Xvid at about 2 to 3 times the Xvid size.

BJ_M's dual Xeon dual core and 16GB will cost quite a bit more than $2K.

[faramith]

Thanks for the replies!, So Dual core is the way to go huh? AMD or Intel? =/

[pchan]

Thanks for the replies!, So Dual core is the way to go huh? AMD or Intel? =/

If money is not an issue, go for Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800. It leaves AMD bitting dust in all categories.

[jagabo]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/14/core2_duo_knocks_out_athlon_64/page15.html
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=12

[BJ_M]

keep in mind AMD is releasing their quad cores next spring , it swings back and forth between amd and intel on who is top gun

[jagabo]

And Intel is releasing their quad cores in the 4th quarter this year.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33697

The good news for AMD is that their architecture will work better than Intel's with four cores. It's not yet clear whether that will make up for their current performance deficit though.